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I Guarantee This Post Will Change Your Life

3 years ago we had a company called AuctionAds kicking ass and we needed our own datacenter with a zillion computers and bandwidth (and lots of expense).

When we sold the company we were able to leverage a great price on bandwidth to keep some boxes there in a rack… I can’t really go into specific details to much because of non disclosure on the sale agreement of the company but trust me we got a great deal.

But now 3 years later all of our servers are out of warranty and we really expanded our company but not our technical resources so moving to a managed hosting solution seems like much greener grass (to me).

Having someone maintain the operating system layer of the server, backups, firewalls, monitoring sounds pretty awesome.

So we have been fishing around a big getting some quotes…. the quotes are pretty heavy around 1k/month per box.

But whats heavier is the sales people. They call you constantly and want to know when your ready to buy and what they can do to make the decision easier…. blah blah blah.

So yesterday this guy from Rackspace calls me and is like “Hey made a decision yet?” (it had been less then 24 hours since I told him we would not talk about it at least for another week).

I told him no… he asked what the hold up was. I told him it was mainly price right now. Its hard to justify working away from a working proven system to one that is going to quadruple our expenses.

Which to that he said “Well keep in mind we have a huge number of employees that we GUARANTEE will answer the phone by the 3rd ring.

He also said they also GUARANTEE that in the event of hardware failure they will have the machine back on line within 1 hour.

I took him to task on this guarantee stuff and inquired what the guarantee was. He said – uhh well it means someone will answer the phone one by the 3rd ring and if there was ever a hardware failure we would have everything up and running in less then 60 minutes.

I interrupted him and was like listen dude I get that. But lets say we get one of these monster servers. Virtualize it into 5 different web nodes and the motherboard fries… Because its all virtualized its going to take down every virtual server on that box and every site on every one of those servers. Lets say then you cant locate another motherboard for whatever reason and all of our virtual servers and sites are down for 10 hours costing us $20,000 in lost revenue and maybe another $10,000 in reoccouring revenue. Does your guarantee mean that you are going to cover those losses to us?

So I asked again, “What exactly does it mean if you do not meet your “guarantee””.

He said, “Well we will give you credits”.

I said, “Credits for what?”

He said, “I would have to look at your SLA agreement, but listen we hardly ever have hardware failure and when we do its replaced in like 10 minutes the 60 minute guarantee is a huge leeway we never have a box down that long”.

So ok… I responded “I understand so how about this. Lets write into the contract that for each minute over 60 that our boxes our down for you pay us 1k per minute. Since you are saying it will never happen”.

He responded “I can’t do that”.

me – “Course you can’t. You want me to sign up for your hosting package so you can get a huge commission but when we are loosing money cause your shit is down then where you at? We will be given a random amount of some sort of “mysterious credits”? WTF is that”.

That’s basically where the conversation ended….. for now… I am sure he will call me this morning.

But it really got me thinking. Making a guarantee is an amazingly powerful selling tool. I bet 99.999% of the time nobody ever inquires what the actual guarantee is.

For instance I could say I guarantee this post will change your life. And you would read it… right? But whats the guarantee to back it up?

I guarantee now that fake blogs and testimonials are under attack by the FTC I suspect we will see a rise in guarantee statements as the new way to mislead the consumer.

Dave

This post did actually change my life…because it changed the way that I negotiated with salesmen and women whom flippantly throw around words to close deals. This is a really good business principle

June 16, 2010

festo

I have a sizable number of servers hosted with Rackspace…and I had the nearly the same conversation with Rackspace regarding their guarantee, with pretty much the same result you experienced.

That being said, we have had two outage events in 5 years, neither one lasted more than 1 hour, and in both situations they made it up to us. If you want any info about their service or reliability, drop me a line.

May 27, 2010

thoushallpass

Two outages in five years? I might hit you up myself in a couple of weeks, I think I might want to move my hosting someplace permanent.

Stay away from RackSpace for your hosting needs. No need to give additional examples as it appears you are quite aware of their services and the issues they present.

In my opinion RackSpace utilizes high pressure sales pitches (ie contact telephone calls and emails) to pressure you into hosting with them. Once you are aboard you would expect the same type of service from their support. But indeed that is not the case.

What drives me absolutely batty about RackSpace is the fact once you provide them your contact details they hound you day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. It has been approximately 2 years since I had inquired about their hosting solutions. At lease once per month they attempt to contact me. Since the whole cloud hosting became somewhat affordable, they have been attempting to contact me almost weekly. Even after stating to them at least 4 times I am not interested in their services and wish to be removed from their contact lists. Low and behold the next call comes from a new account representative and the whole process begins to repeat itself again.

I hope you do not experience the same BS I am experiencing with RackSpace!

they have the best support.
I got myself rackspace box two weeks ago so far it’s been really good, as far as uptime it’s been only two weeks so i can’t say nothing about that yet but the support is amazing They ALWAYS pick the phone you can actually speak with someone 24hr

Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

I have experienced rackspace to provide a good service, their support level is much above anything else I have experienced…. and you pay the price for that.

Other companies you might get quotes from:
inetu.net
peer1.com – they have managed support but you kinda have to call them to get them to start working, they don’t get started on their own

I don’t think there is a single hosting company that guarantees anything beyond what you pay to them. Nobody wants to be out of profit for whatever reason 🙂

May 27, 2010

Tom

We use Rackspace’s hosted POP email solution, which generally has been OK, and they make it easy to host both simple POP and also Exchange accounts within the same domain.

However, I reported an issue to them 1 year ago whereby their email servers will randomly reject a sender or email recipient as invalid; this problem is due to how they authenticate their email, and the problem has grown in scope and frequency. Now, a year after my initial report and I’m sure many others, with random rejections for email sent between accounts hosted on Rackspace occurring dozens of times per day, the best they can say is they are aware of it but it may take months to resolve and they have no formal plan. That does not sound like fanatical service to me.

Steve

Nope, still feels like the same life. But you should check out liquidweb or pair, they take really good care of us. Besides, guarantees are so 2005, anyone still selling me based on a guarantee makes me really skeptical. I value reputation over a guarantee any day of the week.

Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

Most of the time guarantees are made to ease your mind. The only thing that is a “guarantee” when something goes wrong is panic.

Nice post. You made me read it and now I’ll be adding a guarantee to my website.

May 27, 2010

LOL

Jeremy, I can’t decide if I like you or hate you. Let’s just leave it at respect – you know your stuff and are good at what you do. Funny, though, that you are talking about presumed lack of customer service and offering capability when you lost me as a paying customer due to inability to deliver on either.

Our company’s web host went down for a single day once and we lost thousands of dollars in revenue. Not only that but you have to consider that some of those customers could have been repeat – you’re losing even more than you originally thought.

It’s sort of a double edged sword. If there was a hardware problem with the hosting, you’re pretty much SOL, not much you can do about it and you won’t be compensated.

My life has been changed as a result of reading this post – I’ve lost several minutes that I’ll never get back. 🙂
Actually, you present a good point about the word “Guarantee” and how it’s thrown around and no one ever really holds anyone accountable to the guarantee.
A money-back guarantee is a useful sales tool, but how do you guarantee that something will actually work exactly how you say it will? You can’t.

Good point. My websites were hosted on Westhost and back at the end of Feb. they had a sprinkler system malfunction (during a routine safety inspection) and it wiped out 60% of their servers. All my websites went down. What ticked me off was the fact that they had a guarantee that said they could withstand ANY tragedy or catastrophe. NOT! It took over a week to get one of my sites back online. I was not happy. To this date, it still has issues. The AWStats doesn’t log correctly. Their resolve: a $35 credit! Thanks Westhost! I’m sure Rackspace would be no different.

My webhost guarantees 24/7 support. When my dedicated box went down no one answered their phones and a guy’s wife was running the live chat. The next morning my box got back online and I talked to the president and they gave me a 1/3rd month credit. This month my box was down for another whole day without them contacting me and their live chat was offline an no one was answering phones.

It’s like ‘I guarantee we do XX and if we don’t we give you XX credit to continue our unreliable service!! Sound good?!?’

Just pull that line from Tommy Boy with Chris Farley about the butcher and the warranty lol.

veronica_sm

Wait a minute, isn’t all this new cloud computing stuff suppose to solve these problems. Like you don’t need to be leasing individual servers anymore, nor worry about them frying right? Or am I missing the point altogether…sorry I got vacation packing on my mind.

May 27, 2010

TomYoon

Interesting story about the sales process. You called this guy’s bluff. So have you heard from him since?

May 27, 2010

The American Dream

Interesting thoughts on a guarantee as a sales too. I do recall see a recent promo, where a company was using their guarantee as part of the promo plan. They had a flashy name for it…. “ROCK SOLID GUARANTEE” or the ‘GOLDEN GUARANTEE’ with all terms spelled out. I was price shopping at the time, and this helped the company stand apart from the rest. Unfortunately, I did not feel confident after speaking with the sales rep and did not end up using the service.

Wow, bravo sir, bravo. Great post, and you hit the nail on the head. Giving something a guarantee is the easiest way to draw them in, I knew that’s what drew me in. Well played, and I shall keep that in mind.

-Bryan
sff-hub.blogspot.com

May 27, 2010

Silver

What a shitty post and waste of time. They are in sales, of course they try to sell you like all other companies.

May 27, 2010

WhateverWorks

Why didn’t you provide your URL so that we could tell you how shitty your posts were? It’s easy to be a critic, isn’t it?

May 27, 2010

California Dreamin

OMG! You were RIGHT. The post totally changed my life. I just made $4,000,000, married Brad Pitt, won the HGTV dream home, and retired at 21. You are a man of your word. More guarantees! Please!

Hostrocket was by far the worst customer service and uptime our company has ever experienced. They guarantee 24 hour customer service, but try calling them at 2AM on a Saturday with a down server that requires more than a manual reboot and you will have to wait until 10AM Monday. This happened to me on a regular basis, so we took our business to rackspace.

Rackspace was excellent customer servrice and uptime, but you pay for it and we moved to the planet last year.

We have been with the Planet for a year with no downtime or restarts on any of our deds to date so I can’t rate their customer service at this time. Their pricing is very attractive, we are currently leasing quads with 8G Ram for around $300.

Poor guy, you gave him such a hard time, he was only doing his job, what the company had told him to do, don’t blame you though, don’t you just hate those sales calls.

Just give me what I ask for or bog off.

Great Post, I am just glad I am not that guy!

May 27, 2010

AnnieP78

As a former Rackspace client, I haven’t experienced any issues with regards network downtime since they have some serious web equipment working down there. What I do frequently complain about is the inefficiencies of their staff. After 2 years of constantly hearing “We will look into that as soon as possible,” I switched to WordPress VIP.

May 27, 2010

Cristina Dy

This post changed my life alright. I wasted five minutes reading some post that kind of reminded me of Stephen King novels: Boring. We all know Rackspace has technical problems all the time and its customers are expected to look for a decent ISP after a couple of months.

May 27, 2010

Jona712

I believe that because of Rackspace’s inefficiencies, it led to the establishment of fresher, more reliable managed providers like Datapipe and Logicworks. If Rackspace won’t do anything about these soon, they’ll be filing for bankruptcy in a month or two.

May 27, 2010

moolahmachine

It’s ThePlanet that is making waves right now! Why choose Rackspace when you can get a thousand times more service with this one?

May 27, 2010

WhoisDoyle

Try checking out Datapipe and Logicworks, too. These babies are the freshest managed service providers ever to replace useless crap like Rackspace.

May 27, 2010

Robin Sterling

This did not change my life. You know what changed my life? When I switched to WordPress VIP. Gets the job done every time! And you know what will absolutely change your life, Shoe? Regular diet and exercise!

May 27, 2010

spameater

Liquid Web is still the best for me! As for Rackspace, unless it will pull off a complete turnaround, we can expect to see it collapse to ruins. (Believe me, Rackspace should be called Crapspace.)

May 27, 2010

Husher50

Give Rackspace some slack! Nothing in this world is certain and all ISP’s experience downtime just like the rest of the pack.

May 27, 2010

newmediaist12

I totally agree. No matter how many upgrades you managed to establish in the infrastructure, the probability of failure and downtime is still very large in the hosting business. Want an ISP that doesn’t break down? Try building one yourself and let’s see if they can pass the mainstream standards.

May 27, 2010

WilmaP

Here’s a suggestion: Find a few good providers and put your eggs in several baskets. To throw in a bigger margin of success, keep searching for other good providers in the process so you will have a definite Plan B.

May 27, 2010

Vince

I don’t think Shoe was making this post about Rackspace. It’s not about how sucky their service is. This is about companies and representatives saying they’ll guarantee blahblahblah. It’s a general experience, I’m sure everyone has heard a pitchman say that. There’s no need to defend Rackspace, since this isn’t about them. Although they were mentioned.

May 27, 2010

PartyPussParty

All this RS shit doesn’t even cut it! Who gives a fuck about RS people when you know that WordPress VIp is the shit?

May 27, 2010

enajyram00

ViaBest is a great ISP option, as well. Discovered them while I was taking flak from my web design clients when I was still using Rackspace. Downtime sometimes reached more than 3 hours. They are a complete failure, aren’t they? Go ViaBest!

“For instance I could say I guarantee this post will change your life. And you would read it… right? But whats the guarantee to back it up? ”

Many people advertise their content the same way by saying they have “premium content”. Anyone can say they have premium content. It’s all about beating the competition and emerging on top – that’s how you get readers. You have to do the work before you can say what you are. Even still, your readers should be able to know if you are top level or not.

May 27, 2010

ara600_m1

I always love reading about your experiences on doing business on the internet. It gives me a lot to think about.

May 27, 2010

SmallBiz Sue

Hmmm. That was less life-changig than I thought it could be. But thanks for the interesting read.

May 27, 2010

TheSandman5050

Rackspace is the most popular in nearly all top-shelf services like Microsoft Exchange due to its complete responsiveness. If you can’t give them a piece of the pie for that, they still deserve a round of applause for their efforts.

May 27, 2010

AnnieLouJ12860

As a constant traveler and observer, I have learned that there is no absolute 100% uptime. However, here’s the catch: if your web application structure is really competitive, you can often have different web servers running and distribute the traffic to the ones that are still online. Problem solved.

May 27, 2010

WanderingMommy

ISP Constants: 1. No 100% uptime 2. You can route your app architecture via various networks if the need arises 3. Rackspace may be oftentimes annoying but aren’t the others as pesky as well?

May 27, 2010

MVZP_01

An awesome post yet again! You made some great points about guarantees and annoying telemarketers.

May 27, 2010

KrisM77

As a newbie, I still can’t take sides. You see, Rackspace has proven its worth or else it wouldn’t be running most of Microsoft Exchange’s traffic. On the other hand, its detractors do have a point. But don’t all known ISP’s fail?

May 27, 2010

medomoc

No matter how much brickbat you will be hurling at Rackspace, this is still very much true: Rackspace Cloud + AWS = awesome!

May 27, 2010

Undercover Affiliate

Your title got me interested at first… but not. I know based on experience that titles serve a purpose. And catchy titles like that? That’s one of my pet peeves when it comes to marketing. “I guarantee…” is a cliche. No one asks what the guarantee is. Nobody ever wonders about the true meaning of guarantee anymore because it’s become a common thing to say if you’re in sales.

FirenzeZ

A hosting company needs to be really hardcore on the customer service because people will ask things like “what is a nameserver?”

October 23, 2010

F2Xsites

Yeah, right! And what happens when you round up 99.99% (I left one out for emphasis)? 100%, isn’t it? So does that make Rackspace sort of a liar after its brouhaha over a system failure?

May 27, 2010

AurorMine

Do rackspace reps realize that they could lose their potential customers by calling them constantly and pestering them?

May 27, 2010

PokeYerFace

I’ve never used rackspace, so thanks for this enlightening bit of info. I don’t like companies that call their clients all the time. Turns me off. I’d prefer to do the calling if I have any problems, and if you don’t hear from me assume I’m okay with your service.

May 27, 2010

Not The Real Shoe

Best title ever. Got a lot of your readers fooled, eh Shoe?

May 27, 2010

Creative Marketer

Pardon me, but I don’t think it’s right to intimidate that guy from Rackspace. He’s just doing his job.

I get your point about that word “guarantee”. I never bother to ask that question too — what’s in it for me? What’s the guarantee? Good post.

May 27, 2010

Yes2Freebies

The more freebies I could get my hands on, the better! As for Rackspace, it sucks big time! Switch to Logic Works!

May 27, 2010

ExclaimedIdeas

Sounds like the salespeople you interacted with set you off, Shoe. I know that salespeople can come across as hard sell a lot of times, but you have to remember that a lot of these people are working for comissions and are under a lot pressure to close a deal. They’re also worried that some other salesperson will steal your business away from them with a better deal. Top that off with a boss who is constantly asking for updates and breathing down your neck, then you’ve got one very tense salesperson who might have the habit of jumping the gun.

Shake it off – there are a lot of them out there and you’re bound to run into a couple every so often.

Andrew Says So

it did change my life….. remind me a pizza company that said 30 mins or it’s free…. point blank !!!! (impossible to lose)

anyway it’s a reminder to always ask and challenge the merchant …. I have to admit the rackspace guaratee was almost good.. but anyone that said “it’s impossible” just lie….( it’s technology so anything can happen…)

May 27, 2010

internetFTW

Good ISP’s are honest ISP’s. Think your provider is perfect? Good ISP’s tell clients about their shortcomings, too. Does Datapipe tell its clients it can’t handle as much gristle as Rackspace can? There you go. When an unexpected downtime occurs, you’ll find out. You will definitely find out.

May 27, 2010

WhoSaysWhat01

Downtime? Uptime? What goes around comes around! The risk of the former is highly probable even if your ISP promises to deliver 99.999%!

May 27, 2010

BigMoneyBrooklyn

Don’t mess with Texas.

May 27, 2010

Farzad H.

Changed my life indeed. Now I’ll ask any salesman trying to sell me a product, “Guarantee? What guarantee?” I’ll do the same thing Shoe did, ask ’em if they’ll give me a money if something happens.

May 27, 2010

GQmeansGeek

This is an all-too familiar issue. Not so interesting post either. Running out of ideas, Shoe? I am absolutely sure you’re not hurrying things up for a 3-day weekend or are you? Personally, RS has bogged down due to power failures lots of times. Will happen to other providers, too.

May 27, 2010

Screechy Rich

Note to Rackspace and other insistent marketers: You can convince people to buy a product without bugging them on the phone every single day. Let em come around.

May 27, 2010

Roshaun Philips

Everything has a good side and there’s the bad one. So lay off the Rackspace issue and loosen up! Here’s a nice knee-slapper to make things happier around here: Two eggs boiling in a pan, one male and one female. The female egg says “Look, I’ve got a crack.” “No good telling me” replies the male egg “I’m not hard yet!”

May 27, 2010

Baseer Hannan

Nice one, man! No matter what provider you go for, you will experience downtime at some point. So what’s the problem? Nothing, really. By the way, here’s another one to liven things up: Why don’t they have any toilet paper in KFC? Because its *finger licking good*!

May 27, 2010

Hollaback Will

Even if you didn’t have that title I would still read your post. I just wouldn’t be able to help myself. Gotta read your post, Shoe! What if it does change my life? Seriously I’m waiting for one of your blog posts to change my life.

May 27, 2010

E. Langdon

I think salespeople are better appreciated in small doses. I certainly wouldn’t call back a day after the prospective client told me that they need a week.

May 27, 2010

Runs With Scissors

This kind of agressive selling without the information or the ability to explain what they are promising is a sure way to piss people off and turn them off your product for a very ling time, if not forever.

May 27, 2010

B.Logan

“Making a guarantee is an amazingly powerful selling tool. I bet 99.999% of the time nobody ever inquires what the actual guarantee is.”

— That’s true. I just realize that now. I love this post. I love how it’s sort of about empowering the consumer. 🙂

May 28, 2010

BearPile

I don’t think it’s 99.99%. I would rather believe there are some people who ask about guarantees but they don’t get the answer they want from the company. Some people probably just ignore the implication of the word “guarantee”.

May 28, 2010

Alan Alan

Satisfaction Guaranteed— how do you even guarantee satisfaction? I hate reading those two words on print ads.

May 28, 2010

georgeblanco

While I understand that the salespeople managed to get your goat, Shoe, I hope you realize that nobody can guarantee 100% percent perfect performance 100% of the time. Severs break down, and a lot of time, the sales people aren’t the ones who can do anything about it or offer you a guarantee.

May 28, 2010

Fields of Clover

Agree with Denny Sugar above. Guarantees are mostly empty words, promises. Reputation is more concrete, tangible, because it’s based on customer feedback.

May 28, 2010

Jeremy Blake

I hate to say this, but Rackspace hosting and their support is shit. I had a plan with them for a few weeks. I fired off a couple support questions, and the best they could manage was one response a day. Not like I was being a super-noob with my questions either. And not to mention, my hosting was terribly slow…I understand I didn’t have the best plan, but my cheap ass dreamhost server was putting rackspace to shame. Anyway, glad you called his lame ass out.

When you know someone is moving and the reason is clear, don’t move in.

Marketing people unless he is the owner of the business, give promises they can’t keep.

May 28, 2010

Kyle

Hah! That ought to teach that sales guy a lesson.

May 28, 2010

OWillWritesWell

Web companies (well not just web companies, lol) promise so much when they want your money, so they’ll throw in a lot of guarantee this, guarantee that. But when they already have your money… ah guarantees can only do so much.

Well, all hosting companies do this not just rackspace, there’s no such thing as 99.99% uptime, even Google itself was down for couple hours last year sometime. Of course, the best way would be actually host it in multiple locations with DNS round robin so ur site would always be up. Btw, Vps.net has locations in US, UK, and one more place. Also, u can save a bunch of money by running Nginx instead of crappy ol’ apache. U know WordPress.com and techcrunch both run Nginx?

Anyways, just couple tips from someone who tries to make a dollar out of a penny, email me if you need my help, I will be happy to advise u for free. 🙂

Good luck! 🙂 And don’t forget to invite me to ur cool parties if I saved u a bunch of money on web servers Shoe!

May 28, 2010

Mark Mead

Support in less than 60 mins? Sounds good. But Media Temple just got attacked a couple of days ago and they got back up and running in 90 MINS. Thing is, Media Temple is a bigger company than Rackspace (correct me if I’m wrong here), and I’m assuming they have more tech support. So what’s the guarantee you can get your system back within an hour?

Isn’t there a law against these types of phone calls? We had the same problem in Germany. Now after the government established a new law it is much better.

May 28, 2010

Dilip

I have an idea shoe.

Why don’t you buy different dedicated servers for different businesses. Why risk putting all eggs in one basket?

Say you have 10 high money-making websites, then go for 10 good dedicated servers from different companies.

For the mediocre business generating websites just go for a reliable virtual server provider.

That way you wont have to bother if by chance any one of your websites is down for an hour or so, coz the others are making money.

Its like putting your money in different mutual funds.

BTW… just wanted to know out of curiosity – did the company that bought AuctionAds made any meaningful profit over and above they paid you? (Because it looks like the site is not making any money right now.)

May 28, 2010

Gabby Dell from SC

It sure is a useful tool. But that’s because people don’t really think what the guarantee is. They just trust the word of the company and they don’t ask questions anymore.

May 28, 2010

Fiona Wong

NicMoon

I’ve always assumed that some marketing statements are overblown promises. Like, who really belives that the juice we get in those tiny tetra packs are “100% pure fruit juice”? But if I have a problem with a product, I don’t chew out the ladies who hawk the stuff in the supermarket asile. I either avoid the stuff or write the BBB.

May 28, 2010

Lola Dee

A lot of marketing pitches mislead the consumer. Their confidence is based on a) the consumer doesn’t really know better and/or b) the things they’re promising to protect will never happen, and c) nobody can prove whether or not they came through in the first place.

May 28, 2010

David R

Another disgrunted post, Shoe? These are getting old. More money tips!

May 28, 2010

James (Is Not Working)

This is the second post in a month that you’ve had problems with service personnel. Maybe you should look into a business that trains them? Good money to be had there, and you’d be doing your part in preventing this from happening to other people.

May 28, 2010

Jason S

Feeling harassed? Give back as good as you get and harass the nearest sales person available! Feel better instantly!

This is the best post you have ever written about marketing/sales. Guaranteed. I would have “marked as read” if you would have titled it, “Back up what you say in your sales calls” or “Why salesmen don’t back their word up”

Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

– Chris Farley (Tommy Boy)

May 28, 2010

Mike

I don’t know about you guys but a use godaddy , i pay $6 month, although i use it only as a redirect, but it works and no downtimes, so what the point to pays all these money for some “boxes”, i don’t get it

IMHopeful

I appreciate the philosophical nature of this post. Very often people are happy when they see the word ‘guarantee’ without really understanding what exactly is guaranteed. You went straight to the point and looked much deeper. That’s why I keep coming back, because I know I will find no bullshit here. That’s guaranteed.

I once spoke with a Rackspace rep about hosting a client’s game servers there. They relentlessly called me everyday for the next two weeks. Even after I told them that we had gone a different route, the calls kept coming. Good post, but hardly changed my life, as you advertised. 😉

May 31, 2010

todd

what a douchebag you are.

get realistic, rackspace are one of the better companies out there, and if it’s not good enough then say no and move on.

they guarantee that someone will answer the phone, not goto a message bank, and that they will have a server back up within an hour. so they have extra hardware ready to go to drop your drives / backup onto.

Nice to see someone actually putting these guys on the spot about their guarantees. The bottom line is that it really doesn’t matter how much you pay or what the guarantee is – if the you-know-what hits the fan then no amount of guarantees are going to help, though some people will try to convince you otherwise. It reminds me of something Jim Rohn used to say – don’t weigh sincerity on the same scale as truth… people can be sincerely wrong (especially where $$ are involved!) 🙂

BradleyT

Great post. We hear guarantee all the time for everything, but in the event the problem actually happens, we the consumer have no idea what we get. I will ask about that next time I hear it to see what is said. Thanks for the insight.